1
00:00:10,910 --> 00:00:11,177
Yeah.

2
00:00:11,177 --> 00:00:13,313
Venus has a few really big challenges.

3
00:00:13,313 --> 00:00:16,216
The surface temperature is like 900
degrees Fahrenheit,

4
00:00:16,216 --> 00:00:20,253
which is about even
with a professional wood fired pizza oven.

5
00:00:20,587 --> 00:00:23,590
And the pressure is crushing at 90 times
what we have on Earth.

6
00:00:24,190 --> 00:00:27,594
So we need to protect our delicate science
instruments from that.

7
00:00:27,594 --> 00:00:30,063
They're not going to be able
to survive that environment.

8
00:00:30,063 --> 00:00:33,466
So instead, we're taking essentially
the science package from the Curiosity

9
00:00:33,466 --> 00:00:38,304
rover and sealing it up inside a 500 pound
titanium sphere.

10
00:00:38,471 --> 00:00:39,906
It's about three foot diameter,

11
00:00:39,906 --> 00:00:42,709
and that'll protect it
from the temperature and the pressure.

12
00:00:42,709 --> 00:00:45,712
And then we go send that sphere
skydiving through Venus.

13
00:00:46,179 --> 00:00:48,581
We'll take all of our measurements
on the way down.

14
00:00:48,581 --> 00:00:51,418
We'll take us about an hour to fall
from the top of the atmosphere down

15
00:00:51,418 --> 00:00:52,052
to the surface.

16
00:00:53,386 --> 00:00:54,054
We have to take those

17
00:00:54,054 --> 00:00:57,357
measurements as they're happening
and transmit them up to a relay.

18
00:00:57,357 --> 00:01:00,360
And then we will smack the surface
at 30 miles an hour.

19
00:01:07,100 --> 00:01:07,667
Sure.

20
00:01:07,667 --> 00:01:09,102
I'm one of the engineers in charge

21
00:01:09,102 --> 00:01:12,272
of figuring out how to go
take these measurements at the right time

22
00:01:12,272 --> 00:01:15,442
to get the scientists what they need
and to guarantee that we get the data

23
00:01:15,442 --> 00:01:19,946
sent out before we have our up close
and personal encounter with the surface.

24
00:01:20,613 --> 00:01:23,083
So that means a lot of working
with the scientists

25
00:01:23,083 --> 00:01:27,153
and the engineers and optimizing
what our descent looks like

26
00:01:27,153 --> 00:01:30,156
to get the best return
for this really one shot event

27
00:01:30,156 --> 00:01:33,159
to make this work.

28
00:01:38,965 --> 00:01:43,403
So during the actual descent,
during that hour, we're going

29
00:01:43,403 --> 00:01:46,673
to get a little bit of live data, but
we can't talk to the probe at that point.

30
00:01:46,806 --> 00:01:50,076
It's busy
doing running its canned sequence of events.

31
00:01:51,077 --> 00:01:53,813
And so we're all going to be
sitting around in the operations center.

32
00:01:53,813 --> 00:01:56,983
Some of us have been working on these
this mission for ten years or more,

33
00:01:57,450 --> 00:02:00,186
and we're just going to be waiting
for a stream of data to come back

34
00:02:00,186 --> 00:02:03,189
to say whether this work,
to see what we've learned.

35
00:02:03,990 --> 00:02:06,559
And by the time we get any of that data,

36
00:02:06,559 --> 00:02:09,162
the is already dead on the surface.

37
00:02:09,162 --> 00:02:11,931
So that'll be a really tense
but exciting moment.

38
00:02:11,931 --> 00:02:15,201
Will be a great kind of capstone
to to a decade or more of working

39
00:02:15,201 --> 00:02:18,204
on this project

40
00:02:23,243 --> 00:02:25,712
for So Earth
and Venus have a lot in common.

41
00:02:25,712 --> 00:02:27,113
They're similar size.

42
00:02:27,113 --> 00:02:29,048
They're both rocky planets
and Venus is our neighbor.

43
00:02:29,048 --> 00:02:32,051
They're just one planet
closer to the sun than Earth is.

44
00:02:32,318 --> 00:02:34,721
But their atmosphere
is just really punishing.

45
00:02:34,721 --> 00:02:38,191
By the time you get to
the surface, it's a 900 degree atmosphere.

46
00:02:38,791 --> 00:02:40,860
That's the same as a wood fired
pizza oven.

47
00:02:40,860 --> 00:02:43,463
It's a crushing
90 atmospheres of pressure.

48
00:02:43,463 --> 00:02:46,332
And that's about the same pressure
you get at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

49
00:02:47,500 --> 00:02:48,902
It's always cloudy on Venus.

50
00:02:48,902 --> 00:02:50,136
It's the clouds are really thick

51
00:02:50,136 --> 00:02:53,173
and hard to see through,
which makes it hard to study from orbit.

52
00:02:53,740 --> 00:02:56,109
And those clouds happen to mostly be
sulfuric acid.

53
00:02:56,109 --> 00:02:57,810
So they have a habit of trying to eat away

54
00:02:57,810 --> 00:03:00,780
a lot of materials if you're going to
put them through the atmosphere.

55
00:03:01,247 --> 00:03:04,484
So all in all, it's it's a little bit earth like, but it's a horrible place to be.